Chinese Figure Out Way to Make Cigarettes Even Worse for You

Richard O'Connor of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, and a team of researchers, analyzed 78 varieties of popular Chinese cigarette brands and found significantly elevated levels of heavy metals, with some containing three times the levels of lead, cadmium and arsenic compared with Canadian cigarettes.

(Canadian cigarettes were used for comparison because Canadian tobacco manufacturers and importers are required to test for metals content in their products.)

Geoffrey Fong from the University of Waterloo in Canada, said the elevated heavy metals content was due to contaminated soil.

"Tobacco like other crops absorbs minerals and other things from the soil, so if the soil has cadium, lead or arsenic, they will be absorbed into the tobacco," Fong said.

China has more than 320 million smokers--the world's largest smoking population--and is also the biggest producer of tobacco in the world.

"The higher yields of cadmium and lead in cigarettes manufactured in China are worrisome given current smoking prevalence in China and China National Tobacco Company's export ambitions," the researchers wrote.

Meaning that, once China starts shipping cigarettes to our shores, smokers will not only be treated to the usual lethal cocktail of acetone, ammonia, benzene, butane, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, hexamine, cyanide, methane, naphthalene, stearic acid, toluene, vinyl chloride, and of course, nicotine, but they'll also be treated to a "more generous pour" of lead, cadmium, and arsenic.